Holes in My Mind
by Starry-EyedandStormy
Summary: Growing up ruled by the Silence takes tolls on River's mind. How can it not? When you are raised by memory-proof creatures, there are bound to be holes. Told from River's POV; the second in my introspective stories about the memories of the Ponds.


There are holes in my mind. Places where I feel like memories should be, but they are not. Glimpses of things that never were, but somehow are.

They've always been there.

My earliest memory is of an orphanage; an orphanage that was empty except for me. There was a nice man who took care of me, though. He was even nice after he lost his mind. Then the things would come. I don't know what they looked like, but I remember a lady with an eyepatch surrounded by other things that were kind of like people. Or at least, they wore people's clothes. But they couldn't have been human because they could hurt you in ways people can't. I can't remember what they did, but I remember the pain afterwards, and I still have some of the scars. Something like burns.

Then the things sent the spaceman. Well, it was a spacesuit, I guess, but it's hard to think of as just a suit when I can remember it coming after me. Then there are more holes until I escaped the suit.

After escaping the suit, I ran. That was the beginning of my running, and I've been running ever since. It was hard. I managed to get from Florida to New York somehow, and along the way, new injuries found their ways across my arms and legs. Tiny scraping scars where I would scratch or cut myself to keep track of the creatures that I could not remember afterwards. All those scars and injuries disappeared when I regenerated for the first time. Looking back now, I feel a bit badly for that poor homeless man who witnessed that...

It's only more holes in my mind as to how I got to Leadworth, and honestly, a great deal of my childhood there is holes too. Blank and gone. I can remember my times with Amy and Rory, but nothing else. ...No, I take that back... The lady with the eyepatch who visited me at the orphanage came. And she taught me to hate the Doctor while Amy taught me to love him.

Of course then I finally met the Doctor. That day I can remember perfectly: the day I killed him for the first time, fulfilling my purpose. But then I brought him back... fulfilling my destiny. And I fell for him. I couldn't stop thinking about him the entire time I was healing at the Sisters of the Infinite Schism hospital, and then I went to the Luna University. I kept the Doctor in my thoughts then too because it kept away the holes.

But I was still running. Running from the creatures and the lady with the eyepatch, and running to the Doctor.

I thought there were no more holes while I was at the University. I was wrong. The creatures came back, led by the eyepatch lady... and they brought the spacesuit. That damned, bloody spacesuit that still haunted my nightmares occasionally. And on the day of my graduation too. Suddenly, my mind was full of more holes than ever. So many that the memories started to seem like the emptiness and the holes felt full.

I waited in dread in Lake Silencio until the day I was to kill the man I had come to love, even though I'd only truly met him once. When he finally came, I did the only thing I could: defy time.

And then the alternate reality started. I finally learned who the lady with the eyepatch was. Madame Kovarian. I also learned what the creatures were: Silence. But then the Doctor was found, and Amy brought him to us. He was so cold to me, and if I hadn't loved him so much I may have doubted my memories of him. I would have thought that he didn't love me, and that he was the cold-blooded warrior that Kovarian had always told me he was. But he's not, and he wasn't. We had to make him see that.

There are holes in my mind. They try to eat away at my memories, but I don't let them. The holes are holes. They cannot be filled, but neither do they grow. They cannot erase the pain and evil I have known, but neither can they take away the joy and love that I have from my parents and the Doctor. I am strong and avoid falling into them when I walk through my mind. When I am weaker, the TARDIS can sometimes help me navigate around them. She helps me as much as she can since I am her child too.

There are holes in my mind. The Doctor doesn't know.

...I hope he never does.


End file.
